Union Terminal murals' hands on the move

Jul. 7, 2013

Artist's rendering of the mural planned for the northeast corner of the Duke Energy Convention Center. The mural uses the hands from the figures appearing in the murals that are in the rotunda, checking lobby and lower levels of the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal as well as the 14 industrial murals 14 industrial murals that once hung in the train station's concourse and are now at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. Nine of the industrial murals are endangered because two airport terminals where they stand are slated for demolition. Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory hopes to bring the nine endangered murals to the Convention Center. The painted Convention Center mural, employing paint designed to last 25 years, uses hands from the figures depicted in the Union Terminal murals. This mural will be created by a staff overseen by Cincinnati-based artist Jenny Ustick. / Provided by ArtWorks

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Artist's rendering of a mural that will be painted on the northeast corner of the Duke Energy Convention Center. It will be created by Jenny Ustick and 13 others. / Provided

PRESENTATION, DONATIONS

The presentation ceremony for Jenny Ustick’s ArtWorks mural based on the hands in Winold Reiss’ Union Terminal mosaic murals takes place at 1 p.m. today in the South Meeting Room (Room No. 230) of Downtown’s Duke Energy Convention Center. ArtWorks is accepting donations for the hands mural at: http://bit.ly/16h4vpS. All donations matched by the Johnson Foundation.

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Coming soon to a Downtown convention center wall near you: portraits of the work-hardened hands on the old Union Terminal murals.

Someday, if fortune smiles on Cincinnati, the Duke Energy Convention Center will house nine of those murals.

For now, however, the hands on the outside of the building will do just fine. They will serve as symbols for what has come before and what lies ahead.

“I’ve always been sentimental about those old mosaic murals,” said Jenny Ustick, the new work’s lead artist. “They are emblematic of what Cincinnati is all about on a grand scale and on a personal level.”

The 3,124-square-foot canvas will cost $64,000 to paint the surface of the facade’s square beige bricks.

Each rectangular section of bricks, holding 150 beige squares per section, will be coated with acrylic paint set to last 25 years. Each rectangle will hold one hand.

Ustick and her 13-member team (11 students plus two art teachers) start work on their seven-week project right after today’s 1 p.m. presentation ceremony.

The working hands mural marks the third large-scale piece the Cincinnati native has overseen for ArtWorks, the nonprofit dedicated to placing public art out in the open Downtown. She also led crews responsible for the 2012 CharleyHarper mural, “Homecoming (Bluebirds)” at Court and Walnut streets, and C.F. Payne’s 2011 “The Singing Mural,” on the south wall of WCET-TV’s Central Parkway headquarters.

She’s proud of those earlier works. But the one with the hands has touched her heart.

“You can tell so much about a person by looking at their hands,” she said. “You can tell the hard work they’ve done, the life they’ve lived.”

Thirty-seven hands on the mural belonged to people who knew the value of hard work. They were real-life laborers who posed for the old train station’s murals in 1931.

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Three hands are new additions. Ustick selected the trio from two convention center workers and one of her fellow artists.

The hands from Union Terminal can be found on figures in the rotunda’s murals and the 16 industrial mosaics that once hung in the train station’s long-gone concourse. Some of the former will have to be disarmed for Ustick’s mural.

“ArtWorks works with kids,” she explained. “Can’t have images with lots of guns.”

Working on the convention center mural has taken Ustick back in time. It has given her the chance to see three generations of her family’s hands.

“My great-grandparents came to Cincinnati from Nuremberg, Germany, in 1930,” she said. The next year Winold Reiss started work on his Union Terminal murals.

“My great-grandfather was a baker and he was all about America and everything that it had to offer,” Ustick noted. “Those murals at Union Terminal tell Cincinnati’s story, what was made here and who did the work.”

She recalled the first meeting she had with convention center officials. At that June 3 session, they requested a mural with elements visitors could see and “know they were in Cincinnati.”

Their words brought to mind more hands for Ustick. She remembered her grandfather, Herman Roesel. He worked at Procter & Gamble’s Ivorydale soap factory in Saint Bernard.

Reiss also spent time at Ivorydale. He sketched and took photos for the industrial mural of three soap cutters that hung in the concourse.

Now, that mural stands in one of two closed terminals at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. Those two closed terminals hold nine of the old train station’s industrial murals. Plans call for the closed terminals to be demolished by 2015. The nine murals need a new home. Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory wants to bring them to the convention center.

“Whenever I see that P&G mural,” Ustick said, “I can see my grandfather.”

When she visits the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, she looks up to the mural on the rotunda’s south wall.

The towering figure holding the oil can speaks to her of Virgil Neal, her great-grandfather on her mother’s side of the family. He was an engineer for the B&O railroad.

She always looks at the hands on the man in the mural. They remind her of her mother’s hands.